Somewhere a red phone box dies and a little piece of Buckingham Palace breaks off.

Posted on 16 March 2017 by Douglas Chadwick

Since the declaration of ‘Brexit’, it has become obvious that politicians, House of Lords peers, and BBC reporters have little intention of making our exit a smooth one. None of them were ever going to be kept quiet by a lack of information. Fortunately, there does appear to be a flow of foreign money investing in the UK, taking advantage of cheap sterling and a willing labour force. Let us hope that this continues through the tribulations of the next two years, whilst we re-establish the country as an exporter of technology and manufactured goods - hopefully without losing too much sway in the financial sector. Perhaps then, the media might even start to talk about Great Britain again! Theresa May has a big enough battle on her hands, both here in the UK and in Europe, if she is to secure an equitable settlement. Then along comes Lord Heseltine, that bastion of free speech and democracy, to say that he believes she is the right person to lead the country, although he is still firmly in the ‘Remain’ camp. To me that sounded a bit like the hangman saying that you have a pretty neck! The kiss of death from the grim reaper if ever there was! Nevertheless, with all this unpredictability taking place around our heads we still must continue to mentor our investments and pensions. For the moment, the election of President Trump, and to some extent Brexit, would seem to have produced a nice positive bounce in the world stock markets. This can be seen below in our two demonstration portfolios. Some of our funds are still enjoying the strength of the dollar, which is giving their prices a lift when converted back to sterling. This is also contributing to the Global sectors consistently coming out top in our recent analysis.

One of the sectors which in recent times has given a consistently positive performance is the technology sector. This all-embracing term covers pharmaceuticals, bio-technology, energy capture and distribution, nano-sciences, gene manipulation, G.M. foods, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The list goes on and on. The speed of change that these sciences are going to bring to the world is going to be breath-taking and it is underway right now. So, as investors, it is essential that some of our money should be in this sector. I have listed below some unit trusts, investment trusts and ETFs which operate in this arena.

	3 month gain.	12 month gain.
Henderson Global Technology fund	15.6%	50.7%
AXA Framlington Global Technology fund	15.8%	47.6%
L & G Global Technology Index fund	16.1%	50.0%
Pictet Robotic Fund	12.4%	51.9%
Scottish Mortgage Trust	13.5%	39.5%
Polar Capital Technology Trust	18.2%	67.0%
iShares Automation & Robotics	14.3%	N/A

It is difficult to trace how much money these managers are investing into new technologies, as they still have a majority percentage in the information technologies developed over the last twenty years; companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. These are the funds that logically will be investing into the firms of the new age and there must be more that I have yet to recognise. Many of the firms are operating in America and so also gain from the strong dollar.